New releases from Dead Fingers, Donovan, Rush

Jun. 15, 2012

Dead Fingers / Publicity photo

Dead Fingers are the Alabama duo Taylor Hollingsworth and Kate Taylor, who are now married. They play folk-country-blues through an indie-rock prism. The album came out a while back this year but every time the songs pop up on my “recent songs” playlist, they make me stop and savor. I’ve come to love it.

You can hear shards of influences: John Prine and Iris Dement on “Ring Around the Sun”; 1990s Bob Dylan on “Lost in Mississippi,” which is such a dead ringer for the real deal thanks to Hollingsworth’s pinched and nasally vocals that he could have a second career in a Dylan tribute band; and “Another Planet” has the spacey guitars that defined Galaxie 500. She & Him, Rilo Kiley and Bright Eyes are obvious contemporaries mining a similar vein.

Lyrical declaration of love:“The ring around Saturn’s not a big enough ring for you.”

An advertisement for a Mellow Yellow yoga mat is contained in the CD booklet. It’s a hint of the sometimes hippy-dippy ’60s folk music contained herein. There are strummed guitars, flutes and bongos — you practically expect someone in a black turtleneck and beret to call out, “Hey, Daddy-O!”

And there certainly are some tedious songs about cats and rainbows, but Donovan has a weird streak that gives an edge to many of the tracks and helps him crank out more than a few classics and some happy pop and demented rockers.

The hits are “Season of the Witch,” “Mellow Yellow” and “Sunshine Superman.” Thanks to the two discs — better compiled than the earlier double-CD “Troubadour” — you’ll find a lot of great songs you maybe didn’t know exist, such as “Barabajagal (Love Is Hot)” performed with the Jeff Beck Group and the ode to the mythological continent “Atlantis.”

Inspirational verse:“Everybody who read the Jungle Book knows that Riki Tiki Tavi’s a mongoose who kills snakes/ When I was a young man I was led to believe there were organizations/ to kill my snakes for me/ i.e. the church, i.e. the government, i.e. the school/ but when I got a little older, I learned I had to kill them myself.”

The Canadian prog trio follows up 2007’s satisfying “Snakes & Arrows” with an even more engaging effort, a steampunk concept album whose protagonist evolves against a backdrop of carnivals, pirates and the Watchmaker “who imposes precision on every aspect of daily life.” It’s an ambitious, sophisticated effort by a band that sounds surprisingly vital after 20 studio albums.